(Original post by typonaut)
Yes, that is at the heart of the "out" campaign.

And how does this point you claim to be making relate to the EU?

I had no idea that misinformation about the NHS and minimum wage laws had anything to do with the debate. And because you are suggesting that all those EU directives will be repealed if we leave, if they're all so great then it would be an unwise move.

(Original post by Jammy Duel)
I had no idea that misinformation about the NHS and minimum wage laws had anything to do with the debate. And because you are suggesting that all those EU directives will be repealed if we leave, if they're all so great then it would be an unwise move.

No. You stuck the NHS and minimum wage in there, not me. I also did not suggest that those laws would be repealed (though it does seem a bit odd to vote the leave the EU and then leave all the old EU law in place - since that is surely what the "outers" are objecting to!?).

The point I was making was that there was a query as to why the left should support the EU, I made a partial list of EU law that directly affects labour and equalities law in the UK - areas of law that the left is generally interested in.

At the same time I also say that many of these laws would not have come into effect had the UK not been in the EU. I suppose it follows that I think that these laws are generally good for the population of the UK, and from that that the UK should remain in the EU.

Whatever your gripes with the EU are I think that everyone should understand that it has done a lot of good for UK citizens. If we were to leave much of that would not change, but future initiatives may well be lost. At the same time we would be cast out on to an ocean of the unknown, where we would have to negotiate treaties with individual governments and other trading blocks. It should be clear to anyone that such treaties come with strings attached - I could make another list of the ways in which the UK and other states have had to change their laws in order to accommodate their obligations in international law treaties - it would be a long list. Just do a little research into the EU-USA negotiations over TTIP, or the rows in Australia about agreements with the USA.

(Original post by interact)
No way, I thort it started in Greece. Ok, I've changed my mind now.

Everyone vote in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!

No, it started in the USA. Sub-prime mortgages led to various banks going bust and being bailed out by central governments. The repercussions from that, stemming from 2007, are still being felt today (very low interest rates as an example).

This went on to affect many different countries (including the UK), one example of this is of course Greece - the general causes of which were banks lending to entities that couldn't really afford to pay back the money, and governments of those countries not really being in control of their economies.

If you think Greece is the cause of the malaise in the UK economy for the best part of a decade then think again. Likewise the rest of Europe.

People like to go on about problems in the eurozone. But they seem to miss the fact that there are many different successful economies using the euro - Germany, France, Netherlands, Finland… They also cite examples like Denmark who are not in the euro - but the trick there is that the Danish Krone is directly tied to the euro. The Danes like their independence, but not enough to truly set their economy adrift on the foreign exchange markets.

(Original post by balanced)
Yeah, the cause won't be a Brexit though. A brexit wouldn't be good for trans-national corporations, only for smaller business as the impact of regulations wouldn't be benefiting big businesses anymore.

The market is very fragile as it is, any slight upset may trigger a collapse.

I suspect the real damage would be if the SNP tear up the union as a result of Brexit.

Britain's market is only better than the EU because it kept its distance from joining the Euro, otherwise we would have had to putn billions into propping up Greece, Italy, Spain, etc. We would be part of a weak currency and not be able to print more money to pay down debt which is essential as the Greeks have found out. Debatable, but many also view Gordon Brown's printing of more money (quantitative easing) as successful in keeping the economy flowing better than it would have been.

The EU deal has problems, chiefly:

1). We won't experience its effects until after a Yes vote - then its too late we're stuck in Europe if the deal does not deliver desired results. Will curbing benefits reduce immigration pressures from Eastern Europe, etc.

2). A future pro EU PM (like Blair was) could take Britain towards an ever greater union with the EU, the 'does not necessarily mean' leaves the decision in the hands of the British PM not the people of Britain. So this is likely to be solved undemocratically against the will of the people by one person's choice, the PM at a given point in the future if we went with EU deal.

3). The issues of pressures on Jobs and Housing are the main concern of Briton's, the benefit issue is a sideshow and this deal probably won't ease the pressure here. Britain can't keep up with demand to house its native population let alone the population of Eastern Europe.

(Original post by Gavin2016)
2). A future pro EU PM (like Blair was) could take Britain towards an ever greater union with the EU, the 'does not necessarily mean' leaves the decision in the hands of the British PM not the people of Britain. So this is likely to be solved undemocratically against the will of the people by one person's choice, the PM at a given point in the future if we went with EU deal.

This is a rather simplistic view of what democracy actually means in the UK. We do not, and have never had, direct democracy - ie the people voting on issues that affect the state. What we have is delegated democracy - we vote in individual MPs who we hope will reflect our views when they vote on matters in Parliament.

It's is very naive to believe that we could ever have a system whereby the government of the day could be largely hobbled in making decisions because it first had to consult the entire population by way of a referendum. This process, which in itself is somewhat alien to UK politics (the first ever UK referendum was the 1975 vote on whether to remain in the EEC), because we generally have a concept of parliamentary sovereignty - ie that parliament is correct in whatever it does.

It's kind of funny to see those who claim to be interested in parliamentary sovereignty arguing that this isn't good enough and we need a referendum to tell parliament what to do!?

3). The issues of pressures on Jobs and Housing are the main concern of Briton's, the benefit issue is a sideshow and this deal probably won't ease the pressure here. Britain can't keep up with demand to house its native population let alone the population of Eastern Europe.

I don't really know that there are pressures on jobs per se, unemployment levels seem to be decreasing, or remaining stable. There may be a more general problem with wage deflation, but this seems to be something the government has engineered through various policies, rather than a direct effect from immigration. The problem with housing in UK has nothing to do with immigration. The problem here is that successive governments have had very weak house building programmes, have allowed the buy to let sector to get out of control, have done little to discourage foreign investors and that we have very low interest rates (which encourage investment in property and make it affordable to do so).

(Original post by typonaut)
This is a rather simplistic view of what democracy actually means in the UK. We do not, and have never had, direct democracy - ie the people voting on issues that affect the state. What we have is delegated democracy - we vote in individual MPs who we hope will reflect our views when they vote on matters in Parliament.

It's is very naive to believe that we could ever have a system whereby the government of the day could be largely hobbled in making decisions because it first had to consult the entire population by way of a referendum. This process, which in itself is somewhat alien to UK politics (the first ever UK referendum was the 1975 vote on whether to remain in the EEC), because we generally have a concept of parliamentary sovereignty - ie that parliament is correct in whatever it does.

It's kind of funny to see those who claim to be interested in parliamentary sovereignty arguing that this isn't good enough and we need a referendum to tell parliament what to do!?

I don't really know that there are pressures on jobs per se, unemployment levels seem to be decreasing, or remaining stable. There may be a more general problem with wage deflation, but this seems to be something the government has engineered through various policies, rather than a direct effect from immigration. The problem with housing in UK has nothing to do with immigration. The problem here is that successive governments have had very weak house building programmes, have allowed the buy to let sector to get out of control, have done little to discourage foreign investors and that we have very low interest rates (which encourage investment in property and make it affordable to do so).

You seem to be in denial, the arguments here are clear and are real problems.
The situation of ever greater sovereignty is that a 'not necessarily mean' doesn't mean a lot, if anything. A pro EU PM could just proceed down that path at a later date of his/her own choosing. If we are out of the EU, the PM would need support of their party at least, and ideally the country through referendum. I don't believe it is right to ascert a claim that tradition dictates that the populace not be consulted on constitutional issues such as these. No, there is not compulsion for a referendum to be held on anything, but with a large proportion of the population supporting leaving the EU similar to the Scottish Independence vote, you can't really realistically ignore such support without seriously risking fracturing the country apart. We're not living in the Victorian age here or under a dictatorship, it is entirely reasonable for citizens to have a say on these issues as it affects all of us. The EU itself exposes democracy then act arbitrarily in cutting out the people of Europe at major constitutional change if it looks they wouldn't have the support, hence how we moved from a loose economic agreement (the EEC) to a grab for countries sovereignty.

Not building enough housing for the current population over a long period of time is a fair enough point but adding loads of immigrants from Eastern Europe makes this problem far worse, its stupid to acerbate the problem even more. If we left the EU pressure from immigration would fall off and rent and mortgages (house prices) would ease a little. As it is if it continues housing will become affordable and we'll have our own humanitarian crises on our hands. It already makes life miserable for many of the working population having all or most of their money they earn go on housing costs.

You seem to have no idea how government works. The executive (the government) decides what it wants to do on a whole range of issues and just does it. It signs international treaties and trade agreements without consulting anyone else: not it's party, not the opposition and certainly not the population of the country. If you think that will change then think again - that's the very nature of government.

They've even recently turned to introducing law as regulations and statutory instruments, because they don't want to run things through parliament in order to have a proper debate.

As to the points you make about immigration, I think you are just deluded if you genuinely think that immigration will drop if we leave the EU. We have already established that most immigration comes from outside the EU to start with - the government cannot even control that. One has to assume these extra-EU migrants are mostly coming here because we have a need in our labour market. If that is true then it must also be true that there is such a need because:

a) we don't have the native population to do these jobs

b) there is not the capacity to fill these jobs from the rest of the EU, whose citizens are free to come here

I think it follows that more or less the same number of migrants will come from the EU each year, or some more will come from outside the EU, because our labour market will still require those extra 300,000 people each year.

I have not read a single valid argument in this thread for staying in the EU. A lot of ignorance though.

It seems a lot of you marxists don't understand how a FTA works and how many countries have one with the EU already.

It seems that many believe the UK is utterly incapable of controlling its borders, a process that it maintained quite easily at a fraction of the current level until 1997 and the socialist destruction of our borders.

Then there is the appeal to economic growth. Of course, the massive labour surplus brought by immigration leads to wage compression which means more hiring, more productivity, more job creation, more economic growth. If you only look at these figures it is easy for an ignorant person to see only benefits to immigration. If the UK took in 1 million Syrian migrants this year, our economic growth would rocket. However these figures do not take into account the enormous pressures immigration places on infrastructure, housing, schools, the NHS, the benefits system. Pressures that aren't felt by trendy middle-class leftist students on government grants and student loans, pressures that are mainly felt by taxpayers, parents, homebuyers, jobseekers... ie responsible people.

Neither do the figures take into account the self-perpetuating nature of an immigration-fuelled economy. Immigrants get old, and unless we want to end up like Japan, there must always be proportionally more young workers than old people in an economy for it to function. So you must ask yourself how many generations of mass-immigration can the UK sustain for the sake of this economic growth? When the population reaches 80, 90, 100 million and when the UK has achieved 3rd world levels of schooling and healthcare (the stated goal of many socialists is to cause this state of affairs where people are poor and dependent on government handouts) , will you say that it is worth it for our economic growth figures?

The only chance at returning some semblance of sanity to our immigration policy that worked effectively for decades, is to leave the EU.

(Original post by johnnyb99)
I have not read a single valid argument in this thread for staying in the EU.

That is because you have not read the thread, or at least have not understood it.

Neither do the figures take into account the self-perpetuating nature of an immigration-fuelled economy…

Actually, on that point I would agree with you. The "we need the young from abroad to pay for our OAPs" argument is nothing more than a long-lived pyramid scheme. We need better economic planning than that so that we can achieve something sustainable.

But overall, if the level of argument you can offer on the EU question is what you have stated, then unfortunately you will lose the debate.